Catalogue entry

[from] Nos. 177–94: Small Thames Sketches c. 1807

THESE eighteen sketches of various sizes, painted on mahogany veneer, are all from the Turner Bequest. They were included in the 1854 Schedule as Nos. 184 to 200*, ‘18 fragments various sizes on Veneers—or thin panels’; in the 1856 Schedule no. 200* [N05534], was inadvertently omitted. They were first numbered, laid down on panels, cleaned and exhibited in 1908 and 1910.

The identifiable subjects of these sketches are all on the Thames or its tributary the Wey; several of the Guildford and Godalming views were identified in 1970 by Christopher Pinsent, including No. 186 [N02309], formerly thought to show Windsor Castle. The same area, with the exception of Walton Bridges, is covered by drawings in the ‘Windsor, Eton’ sketchbook and the ‘Wey, Guildford’ sketchbook (XCVII and XCVIII).

The small Thames sketches on panel, like these two sketchbooks, were dated c. 1807 by Finberg (1909, i, pp. 251, 253, and 1961, p. 137), a date that still seems most probable. However, in 1969 Gage divided the sketches into three groups and dated them all later. His first group, Nos. 179–80 [N02308, N02306], 183 [N02305], 187–92 and 194 [N02311], he associates with the ‘Wey, Guildford’ sketchbook but dates c.
1809–10. His second group, Nos. 184 [N02680] and 185 [N02681], he dates c. 1811–12. His third group comprises Nos. 177 [N02312], 178 [N02678], 181 [N02313], 182 [N02679] and 186 [N02309] and is dated by him to c. 1813 or even later, on account of a supposed similarity to the foliage of Crossing the Brook, exhibited in 1815 (No. 130 [N00497]), and a greater accomplishment than the small oil sketches on paper of Devonshire subjects done in 1813 (Nos. 213–25). The Devonshire sketches, however, are not strictly comparable in either technique or general approach, and again it seems more likely that, as is argued in the case of the large Thames sketches on canvas (Nos. 160–176), the whole group represents a single campaign playing a crucial part in the rapid development of Turner's approach to nature in the exhibited pictures of 1807 and 1808. Indeed, in 1983 (exh. cat., Paris 1983–4, pp. 78–9 no. 20), Gage dated No. 186 to c. 1807 and conceded that Turner seemed to have ceased painting the small Thames sketches on mahogany veneer by about 1811.

These sketches were probably done out-of-doors, perhaps from a small boat as the younger Trimmer described, even though he talks of Turner using ‘a large canvas’ (see p. 116). In them Turner approaches nearest to what Constable termed ‘a natural painter’, but, unlike Constable, Turner always seems to have been interested in making a complete pictorial composition even when he came closest to recording a direct experience of nature.